In recent years, information processing systems are becoming complex and large-scale by mutually coupling various types of information processing apparatuses via a computer network (hereinafter simply referred to as a “network”). In connection with this, a failure that occurred in a certain information processing apparatus is affecting the various other information processing apparatuses via the network. As root cause analysis technology for identifying the location and cause of these failures, there is event correlation technology which analyzes the failure location and cause using the event information representing the failure content that is notified from the information processing apparatus (for instance, refer to the specification of U.S. Pat. No. 6,249,755).
The event correlation technology estimates the root cause by utilizing the correlation of events that occur at the time of the failure, and has been used from the past to diagnose the failure of a network system. In addition, analysis of a network failure is mostly related to communication at an IP level as a network layer which is the third layer of the OSI reference model, and the failure analysis method that combines the collection of topology information based on ICMP (Internet Control Message Protocol) and ARP (Address Resolution Protocol), and SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) is mainstream (for instance, refer to the transactions of the Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers Vol. J83-B, No. 9, pp. 1258-1266, “A Proposal and Evalustion of Network Fault Management Supporting System by Integrating Management Information”).